River Revitalization

By Dominic Moore ’05

Rivers form the soul of
Pittsburgh: its geographic
center is the point where
the waters of the Allegheny
and Monongahela Rivers join to
form the Ohio River. The city of
Pittsburgh grew up along these
rivers, drew from their waters,
used them for heavy industry—for
the steel mills that powered the
city’s economy—and built bridges
to cross the numerous waterways
that define the urban landscape. Today, Pittsburgh lays claim to more bridges than
any city but Venice, Italy. But by the mid-1990s,
it had lost half its populations and its downtown,
urban landscape had fallen into post-industrial
decay.

“It was a city waking up from a hangover,”
says Lisa Millspaugh Schroeder ’78, P’11. The
steel mills which had dominated the riverfront
were now dwindling or abandoned and years of
abuse had left the water quality depressingly poor.
“Morale was quite low when we started our work,
but this is a city with a culture of resilience and
reinvention.”

And reinvention was exactly what was on
the table. In 1999, Millspaugh Schroeder moved
to Pittsburgh after working on a series of urban
redevelopment efforts. Her skills were a natural fit
with the nascent Riverlife Taskforce, a project that
would create a vision plan for the city, collecting
ideas, hopes and dreams for redevelopment of
the city’s downtown. After more than 100 public
meetings, the taskforce released a plan in 2001, a
grand vision that would reshape the heart of the
city.

Riverlife, which evolved into an independent
non-profit organization, would be the coordinator
of this urban redevelopment effort, a neutral thirdparty
tasked with drawing on experts in landscape
architecture, design, environmental mitigation and
other specialties and collaborating
with local businesses and property
owners. Millspaugh Schroeder, who
would become president and CEO
of Riverlife, was given responsibility
to implement each crucial phase of
the plan.

“A project of this scale is like
one big jigsaw puzzle,” Millspaugh
Schroeder says. “Each component
along the planned 13 miles of park
has a different use, geography and
ownership. Our goal was to be a
catalyst, to help connect the fabric of the city to
the river.”

In order to do that, Riverlife works closely
with property owners to help them achieve usable,
beautiful park space that benefits the entire
community without breaking the bank. Hotels,
casinos, stadiums and infrastructure—each
element of a vibrant city would need to be carefully
interwoven with the parkland and with the rivers
themselves. To this end, Riverlife advocates for
certain standards: water access, a trail system, a
promenade open to the public, and then provides
expert assistance connecting the dots. “One whole
arm of Riverlife is our advocacy for sustainable and
high quality design,” she says.

The results of Riverlife’s work are dramatic: 63
new acres of green space now enrich Pittsburgh’s
downtown and help make up Three Rivers Park,
the crown of a $4 billion revitalization of the city’s
dramatic riverfront. In just over a decade, the Steel
City has become a city of waterfront parks, a place
where pedestrians flock downtown to soak in the
beauty of a revitalized urban landscape. “There has
been an exponential rise in use of the riverfront,”
Millspaugh Schroeder says. “Now it’s becoming a
tradition to face the rivers again.”